What Country Saw The Origin of Rugby Football

What Country Saw The Origin of Rugby?

The Country That Saw The Origin of Rugby was England.

The earliest claims on the Origin of Rugby go back as far as the Romans and a belief that when they arrived in the country of England they brought a ball game that evolved into rugby.

The Rugby Football Union though sees the origin of rugby not from another country, but from a bolt of inspiration at a fine English college - the Rugby School.

Their claim is that it all began in 1823 when in a football match one of the Rugby students, named William Webb Ellis, picked the ball up and ran with it. It is now accepted that such an earth shattering event never happened and that the origin of rugby is lost in the 18th and 19th centuries. The fact is no one ever saw Ellis do the deed attributed to him in documents published in 1895. Handling of the ball was allowed in soccer until the 1860s.

The disagreements over the origin of rugby comes from the RFU wanting to claim the "rugby" game as their own. While it is not as critical today - notwithstanding rugby union's propensity to call itself "rugby" - in the 1890s the country was split by the rugby-divide that gave birth to rugby league and rugby union.

The gentlemen and upper-class members of the RFU and its London based clubs were endeavouring to prove ownership of the rugby game. They feared that if it were proven to be a game that evolved from village life it would follow the path of soccer - which had become overrun by the working classes.

Excercise: Discuss why it would be important to the RFU in the 1890s to prove that rugby had been invented in a public (private) school? What were they trying to achieve? Does it really matter who invents a sport?